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Theme editing application

jsoupene Member
in Themes
What apps are you using to edit the themes? I am hoping for some sort of WYSIWYG program. I also need it to work on windows. I tried setting up dreamweaver, but it does not like to display PHP in design view. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Comments

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    Well, none of the programs I use is WYSIWYG. I stopped that years ago when I found out I have better control doing it directly. I use Textwrangler as a pure editor but that is Mac only. Main developing is done using Eclipse. Eclipse is available for all platforms.

    I am not familiar with Dreamweaver (used it years ago the last time) but it should be able to work with PHP. But of course you need a web server to be able to display them in function.
  • jsoupene Member
    I just wanting to do some minor changes, like font & color text, shadow on pictures and insert a logo. Do you have any suggestions on where I could look for an easy way of learning how to do this w/ PHP. I did read thru the theme tutorial, but I am still somewhat lost. I don't have a lot of time to invest in learning PHP throughly and hoping for some sort of shortcut. Can you tell I am an young generation American? Ha!

    FYI - For those who are interested in this topic, I did some research last night and found this helpful article on why you do not have WYSIWYG editors for PHP.

    http://www.thesitewizard.com/php/wysiwyg-editor.shtml
  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    Sorry it will be unavoidable to take some time to learn basic web techniques like HTML and CSS if you want to do layout changes yourself. A good learning resource might be http://www.w3schools.com/
  • AlexWilson Member
    Changing fonts/colours, and depending how you do it, shadows, you can probably do in Dreamweaver with a bit of trickery -- from a browser, save the source of the page, then edit the CSS to get the look you want. Then merge those changes into the theme's CSS.

    Anything you want to change beyond what the CSS can do will require you to look at the PHP files.
  • jsoupene Member
    Thanks to both of you for the info. I will take a look at both options in a little bit. Alex, nice job on your latest theme, Silhouette. I will be looking forward to the release.
  • erika_conn Member
    I have the same question as jsoupene. I found a theme I really like, namely zpGalleriffic
    The only thing is, I'd like my own background color and my own font colors. He has that lovely script as his title and I want that too. And I don't like the orange. Gotta lose it.

    So far, I have just been able to change some of the background. I wanted to have the following image for my header: http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i100/erika_conn/header_fotos.gif but when I link that from Options, I get this tiny looking box with a red X.

    I don't know much about css. I usually use html. If you look at his custom css file, you'll be surprised. There are only 4 lines there. How did he get that beautiful page with 4 css lines?

    Oh, my site is http://fotosbyerika.com

    Any help would be so appreciated.
  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    So you use HTML without CSS? And how do you style? No website you see nowaday is done without CSS styling! Knowledge about HTML and CSS is not avoidable if you want to change themes which all are styled via CSS. Seems to me that you have to learn a few things about web techniques.

    BTW. zpGallerific uses more than one CSS files, screen.css is actually the main one.
  • gjr Member
    Yes, the lines in the custom.css file is all that is needed to override the colors in the main screen.css file.

    When setting the logo image file in the theme options, you must enter an image file INSIDE the theme's images folder (not an absolute path).

    The font used in the default is called Scriptina:

    http://www.dafont.com/scriptina.font
  • erika_conn Member
    I was talking about back in the days before dynamic pages. Yes, I know I sound like a dinosaur. Gee, it seems I just learned html. Now it looks obsolete.

    Well, as you can tell, I'm no techie.
  • erika_conn Member
    Oh happy day. I had it in another folder. Duh! OK, one down.
  • jsoupene Member
    Erika, if you have Dreamweaver, then follow AlexWilson's advice above. It has helped me understand how the css interacts alot. Make sure you also look at the site that acrylian mentioned. It is very straight forward tutorials and easy to follow.

    I will be making some small changes here and there over the next week or two so feel free to take a look at mine http://pics.soupene.net and if you see anything you like then feel free to ask me how I did it. It can be frustrated sometimes, but with the help of these great people at zenphoto and some time you will get it just the way you like it.
  • erika_conn Member
    jsoupene, no, I don't have Dreamweaver but I know I will have to study php and css and all that stuff. I have so little time for this but I do have to get this page up and running.

    You're right - the folks here are great. They respond so quickly and actually put up with airheads like myself.

    Thank you all for your patience and thanks jsoupene for your offer. I'll take you up on that.
  • jsoupene Member
    Hey erika and whoever else is looking for a wysiwyg css editor, I have found one called Stylizer and it has really helped me to understand how the php is layed out on the page via the .css file. Make sure you go thru the tutorial, it will only take 15-20 minutes. This was what made the light bulb finally go on for me. They do have a 15 day trial and it is fully functional and just might be long enough for me to figure out the basics of the code.
  • erika_conn Member
    Hi jsoupene,

    I don't know if 15 days is long enough for me :) Anyway, I'll give it a whirl.
  • jsoupene Member
    Hello Erika, just it for the 15 days and go thru the tutorial. The reason I say you probably won't need it any longer is the program will help you understand how the css interacts w/ the php. Once you learn that you won't need the program anymore because you will understand how the code works. It made all the difference in the world for me. Good blessings!
  • snarko Member
    Erika... I'm using same theme but I like the orange. It matches the heavily-used cadmium red (which is orangey) of my artwork. http://snarko.com. I'm switching to logo at the top in a few, once I get it to a good size.

    I found the custom.css not to work well. I edited the screen.css instead (back it up first). No hitch, except apparently the size of the body text affects the size of everything (including links at top) and I didn't want to dig that deep; thus I had to balance that size out.

    I wanted a serif font, since I use italics when I write and I HATE how non-serif fonts look this way.

    I can't get this to work with Dreamweaver, either. I gave up. I need to spend time on content, not learning PHP (though I use HTML/CSS heavily). Sorry. But I LOVE YOU GUYS FOR THIS!!! I only learned to install and edit scripts.

    Anyway, since this thread seems heavily zpGallerific, I swear I used to have a bar of random pics on the bottom of the homepage? Maybe I was smoking crack, and I didn't? Maybe it was ZenPage and not this theme?

    If I wasn't smoking crack, I swear it went away with my first news post. I want it back; it worked for my overall layout.

    ALSO: Is there as easy way to get drop-down menus from the top navigation? Like, I just don't feel the sub-navs per page are obvious enough?

    If you check my site (link above) you'll see what I mean. Try and find my resume (under about). That's important to what I do.
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